The Thirty-seventh Congress (1861-63) had been more ready to borrow than to tax. In all its experience until 1861 the United States had met no crisis in which large revenues had been required. In the thirty preceding years its total annual receipts had ranged from $20,000,000 to $81,000,000, while in the fiscal year in which the war began the total had reached $83,000,000, of which $41,000,000 were loans rather than revenue. Since the panic of 1857 the Treasury had faced a deficit at the end of each year, and had been compelled not only to spend its accumulated surplus on current needs, but to borrow heavily. The tariff duties, collected at the custom-houses, were, as they always had been, the mainstay of the revenue. But these had not met the needs of the three lean years before the war. Had there been no war, the disordered finances of the United States might, in 1861, have called for corrective measures and new taxes, and these could not have become effective before 1862 or 1863. As it was, loans were resorted to for first-aid. In 1862 they alone were more than six times as great as the total receipts of 1861; in 1865 they were nearly three times as great as in 1862. Taxes were authorized more reluctantly than loans, they became profitable more slowly, and did not, until the last year of war, reveal the fiscal capacities of the United States. The favorite national tax of the United States had always been the tariff. Supplemented by miscellaneous items which included no internal revenue after 1849, and no direct tax after 1839, it carried most of the financial burdens. Whether parties preferred it high or low, or levied it for protection or for revenue, they had continued to cherish it as a fiscal device, and had acquired no experience with alternate sources of supply. Like the army of the United States, which in time of war had to break in its volunteer levies before it could win victories, the Treasury and Congress had to learn how to tax before they could bring the taxable resources of the United States to supplement the loans. The tariff was revised and increased several times between 1861 and 1865, and yielded its greatest return, $102,000,000, in 1864. The result was due to both the swelling volume of imports and the higher rates. Like all panics, that of 1857 had lessened the buying capacity of the American people. In hard times luxuries were sacrificed and treasury receipts were thereby greatly curtailed. A return to normal conditions of business would have been visible by 1861 had not war obscured it. Steadily through the war a prosperous North and West bought more foreign goods regardless of the price.